Puberty blocker ban 'part of a series of attacks on Trans people' says Claire Hanna
Claire Hanna was responding to a question on whether her party would have supported the move if it had held a ministerial post.
SDLP leader Claire Hanna has said the Executive’s decision to ban puberty blockers was taken in a climate that “felt like a just a series of attacks on the very small number of trans people."
In a wide-ranging interview with Belfast Live ahead of her party's annual conference this weekend, Claire Hanna was responding to a question on whether her party would have supported the move if it had held a ministerial post.
Ms Hanna said: “I don’t think anybody wants medication to be handed out in a casual way, and I don’t think it is, but it’s the absence of a wider trans health strategy, so people aren’t getting access to even talking therapies and other ways to help them through the challenge that they’re having.
“So we are worried it’s again, a little bit like immigration, an excess focus on a very small number of people, and who may be feeling very, very vulnerable, is leading to their lives being very, very negatively affected. And we think in a very large number of cases, that’s done to distract from the lack of bigger ideas and bigger picture effort to actually improve people’s lives.”
“It’s worth saying that the Executive haven’t produced all of their papers on that. There’s a transparency issue as well, so we don’t have access to the full suite of information. I try to be, and we are, sort of a follow-the-science party, but we haven’t had full details of that," she said.
On wider political culture, Claire Hanna warned of increasing polarisation in Northern Ireland and said ministers were failing to set out a plan for social cohesion.
“There is a sense that even the speaker, we don’t agree on everything, but he said there is a sense that people are coming in and they’re reading their bit and you’re reading your bit, and there’s not necessarily a debate and a moving of minds and we’ve lost, I suppose, the intention to try and persuade each other and try and win an argument. That is a feature I suppose of politics across the world, that sense of polarisation.
“Yes, people will have different views. Yes, people will want to communicate them in a robust way, but we do have to be very clear, particularly in areas like immigration, you know, those words have very deep consequences. There are people who are questioning whether or not they are safe to live in our city, whether they’re safe to continue to serve the public in Northern Ireland and public services because of the ratcheting up of language on an issue like immigration.
“So yeah, I am worried about polarisation across the board and I’m not seeing that sense of a plan for cohesion from the Executive either.”
Turning to accountability in government, Ms Hanna accused ministers of a “hostility to transparency.” Building on her points about the reluctance to provide the evidence that informed the decision around puberty blockers, Claire Hanna pointed to the controversy over the A5 road project, where information had been redacted even from MLAs seeking to scrutinise the process.
“It is simply not good enough to not do the work and then totally withdraw and redact the information when a democratically elected member of the Assembly is trying to drive that accountability,” she said.
“I think it is a good illustration of the relatively closed nature of the Executive and the avoidance of scrutiny on some of those key issues. Daniel [McCrossan] is trying to draw attention to the governmental failures in order to change them in order to get a safe road for the people he represents, and he shouldn’t have that information withheld from him, and the people shouldn’t have the information withheld from them.”
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